Oil won’t drop below $100 in 2014, Iran says

TEHRAN,May 25(MNA) - Oil prices will not drop below $100 per barrel in 2014, according to Mohsen Qamsari, the director for international affairs at the National Iranian Oil Company. Iran is not in favor of high oil prices, because it believes that high prices will damage the economies of oil exporting countries in the long term, the Mehr News Agency quoted Qamsari as saying on Saturday. On Friday, Brent crude, which is used as a benchmark to price over half of the world’s oil, rallied to a two-and-a-half month high of just over $111 a barrel. The rally could continue if the outlook for global economic growth continues to improve, analysts say. On May 6, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said that the country’s crude oil output is projected to rise by 1 million barrels per day over the next four years. In January, Zanganeh said that Iran’s return to oil markets will not lead to a decrease in prices. In a message to members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Zanganeh also said that unconventional oil production from shale reserves by non-OPEC countries will not be a threat to OPEC. He also expressed support for OPEC’s policy of stabilizing its ceiling output at 30 million barrels per day. On March 12, Zanganeh said Iran’s crude oil output was forecast to increase by about 200,000 barrels per day to 4 million barrels per day, and its daily natural gas output was forecast to increase by about 100 million cubic meters per day to 400 million cubic meters per day in Iranian calendar year 1393 (March 2014-March 2015). The country is currently exporting about 1.2 million barrels per day and has projected 1.5 million barrels of daily sales in the national budget for the year 1393, which includes 300,000 barrels of condensates. Iran is estimated to hold 33.7 trillion cubic meters of natural gas and 157 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil reserves. Thus, Iran possesses the world’s second largest reserves of natural gas and the world’s fourth largest reserves of crude oil.